Karin seemed unusually preoccupied with him during the walk back to her room. Instead of her usual intrusive prying, she was stonily silent. Ordinarily, he would have assumed she was ignoring him, were it not for the sharp-eyed glances she kept throwing at him over her shoulder, as if she needed to constantly assure herself that he was still there.

It was different from the confrontational way Karin generally looked at him, as if she was on the precipice of initiating something - a challenge, a fight, a tryst - between the two of them. Her dark red eyes would be boiling over, overfull of confidence, boldness, and a certain poisonous glow of both cunning and mania that was wholly unique to Karin.

Hre gaze now was more reserved than that, more suspicious, less enamored of him—her eyes narrowed more with every sharp glare at him, as if she were half-expecting him to attack her from behind.

"You don't have to keep doing that," Itachi remarked after he'd caught her for the fourth or fifth time. "I am still here."

"I know you are," Karin grumbled, snapping her head forward. "That's what I'm trying to figure out."

They'd been walking for almost five minutes, and it wasn't lost on him that Karin had likely chosen to extend their walk longer than necessary as a means of teasing out whatever curiosity she had. The redundancy of her home only contributed to that effect, the mirrored, repetitive halls they passed through blending seamlessly into one another.

"It's been a long day," he replied simply, staring straight ahead. "There is nothing more to it than that."

"You're the one who's making this into a bigger deal than it needs to be," Karin retorted, her voice rising as if to meet some imaginary challenge. "Walking me here and hovering around me, like I'm some wounded maiden. You feel like you're obligated to do this or something? Like you owe me?"

It seemed quite obvious that Karin was attempting to bait him into retaliating against her. "Of course not," he said, mild as cream. The lie quickly curdled on his tongue. "Still, I'm surprised it's that much of a concern to you."

Karin jerked her head forward again and began to fiddle with the ends of her sleeves, tugging them protectively around her knuckles. "Well, I'm surprised you're bothering with this too." Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her rub at her face, as if trying to wear away the rising blush in her cheeks. "But thank you," she murmured, suddenly bashful. "For—for being concerned, I guess."

Their walk came to an abrupt end shortly after that, Karin's curiosity apparently satisfied.

The next hallway led to a single door that he immediately identified as Karin's bedroom. Unlike the rest of the dark nondescript doors he'd seen traveling through her house, hers was the same ostentatious shade of whiter-than-fresh-cream as the exterior of the house, bordered with patterned woodwork finer than any lace he'd ever seen his mother stitch with her own practiced hands.

He turned to find Karin watching him intently, her brows creased as if in serious thought.

"So…" She rocked back on her heels, tucking her arms behind her. "This is it?" she said, as if it were a question.

"Is it?"

"Yeah?" She squinted her eyes up at him again, as if she thought she could actually peer into his thoughts. "Hm." She wriggled her nose. "I guess so."

"Okay."

She tilted her head and paused, as if waiting for some response from him. "Well…"

"... Good night then, Karin."

They faced each other, blank-faced and uncertain. Karin opened her mouth as if she wanted to say something, but then seemed to think better of it. She shook her head.

"I—" She dropped her eyes, staring down at the floor beneath his feet. "I don't want you to think I'm being a jackass, cause that isn't it. I just—" She bared her teeth in a pained grimace. "I just feel like you feel like you gotta do this cause some shit happened today," she muttered, her voice growing softer the longer she spoke, though it gained very little by way of gentleness. "Not 'cause you actually want to."

"Things happen every day," he said flippantly, though it only made Karin's shoulders sink further. "Was your intent not to bribe me?" he continued, swiftly changing his approach. "Would you be upset if it worked?"

"I—" A creeping blush rose up her neck. "No. I guess not." Her face scrunched up into a little frown before she jammed her hands back into her pockets and sighed loudly. "Not at all. Guess I'm glad to know you're so loose on your morals, if it's that easy to get to you!"

"Perhaps you'd best stick to bribery, Karin."

Finally, Karin's expression lightened, and she smiled back at him, small and close-lipped. "Well, maybe." She rocked back on her heels again, much lighter this time. "So… Have a good night, I guess. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Have a good night, Karin."

.

.

.

Itachi's sleep was brief that night, his thoughts heavy. He returned to the library, to the makeshift bed he'd made himself, and lay for several hours, watching the candles flicker along the sides of the room.

Despite his best efforts, he could not prevent his thoughts from drifting back to Karin, the secrets she'd been keeping, and the plans that she'd made.

The plans that he'd ruined, in his well-intentioned ignorance.

Itachi could not exactly say why he'd kept his own actions secret from her, though as he lay there, unable to fall asleep, the unspoken admission continued to nag at him, burrowing under his skin like a parasite, worming its way deeper and deeper the later the night drew on. He simply did not want Karin to know what he'd done, and the thought of confessing his likely, if somewhat uncertain, guilt left him as uncomfortable and bare as he'd felt that morning, under the invisible, prying eyes of the spellcaster.

That was one matter. What he would do now was another.

He had not checked on either Sasuke or Shisui since the morning. While only hours ago, it now felt like ages. While such delays had been difficult to withstand in the past, caution stayed his hand. He'd left them each in fairly safe positions: Sasuke and Naruto had been traveling in each other's company, and Shisui had been traveling on his own, something he'd been well-suited to in the past.

Naruto, he knew, would protect Sasuke.

Shisui, he could always count on.

Itachi would simply have to be content with that.

He'd spent months spying on the private, intimate moments of his friends and family with very little shame, but being so thoroughly vulnerable himself left him uneasy, knowing that the spellcaster's eyes could be on him and Karin at any moment, that he could be listening in on any of their conversations.

It gave him the same uncertain, critical feel of unwanted eyes on him that he'd often experienced in the village, an acute awareness that very little of what he did would escape the notice of the other townsfolk.

Perhaps it had been naive of him then, to think that it was something he could outrun indefinitely.

But this, he supposed, was something Karin understood as well. Having no privacy, no freedom—even her memories of the time before seemed distant, only faded impressions of what once was. Her entire life had been within these walls, without freedom, without the ability to go elsewhere.

She'd never known the normalcy he'd once tasted, before he'd abandoned his family for the comforts of the Academy. Even the Academy, as remote and desolate as it was, would have been foreign to her, but welcome.

She'd had no family, no friends, no companions—no village to raise her, as his village had attempted to raise him. He'd felt suffocated by that life and had struggled to find a place for himself in it, but perhaps Karin would have fared differently—perhaps she would have flourished where he'd failed, had she been in his place instead.

And perhaps he, if he had grown up as Karin had, without friends, without family—without Sasuke or Shisui, without his mother or father… He cannot say for certain that he would have been happier under such an arrangement, even with the solitude he'd long craved.

Likely, he would have been worse off for it, without the influences he'd been privy to in the village, where he'd been suffocated by love, but loved nonetheless. Perhaps he would have fared much worse than Karin, if he had never known anything else.

He was not so foolhardy or soft-hearted that he would pity Karin, but grace…

Grace was something Itachi could manage.

.

.

.

Itachi woke the next morning and, after making quick work of his morning routine, went straight to the kitchen to make breakfast.

Karin did not appear to be awake yet, so he set himself to work preparing a meal for the two of them, as he had the day before. He sliced fruit and placed honey, bits of soft cheese, and several kinds of nuts on the kitchen table in little blue bowls the cabinets produced for him.

He next asked for flour, eggs, and yeast and set about preparing dough for bread—it would take too long to rise for it to be ready for that day's breakfast, but they could have it with dinner that night, or with the next day's breakfast.

He'd not been one for domestic affairs in his former life, but cooking more elaborate meals was work he had often found precious, when he was still living in the village.

On the road, when he was traveling with others, he'd learned any number of efficient but lackluster recipes that, with minimal preparation time, could reliably feed a half dozen men over a single cooking fire. They, like many of the things he had learned to cook, were largely functional and were not particularly appetizing outside of his travels.

True cooking, that was not restrained by the dual practicalities of efficiency and sparse resources, had often been a luxury to him, and was something he rarely had the opportunity to indulge, when he'd been back in the village.

What he prepared now was an indulgence in that same vein, though it was indulgent now in its lack of necessity, given that prepared meals were otherwise at his ready disposal.

Nonetheless, Itachi selected a recipe he'd learned from watching his mother work, that he'd seldom had the opportunity to practice on his own. His cooking knowledge was much more limited when it came to less practical dishes, though he was not without his own tricks.

Itachi cracked several eggs into a mound of flour and popped each yolk with a jab of his knuckle, then began working the dough into something soft and malleable. The yolk stuck to his fingers, viscous until it was absorbed into the flour, forming a clay-like ball.

In another dish, he sprinkled a pinch of yeast and added hot water to it, which he soon combined with his dough after it activated, forming into a round ball that he covered lightly with oil from another cabinet.

He was in the midst of setting a warm towel over top of his dough when the hallways began to churn, creaking in echoes that drew increasingly closer. He was unable to hear Karin herself approach, though it was not long before he heard the dook click behind him.

"Good morning, Karin," he said. He turned to find her standing in the doorway, her back stiff as if she's been caught intruding. "Do you want breakfast?"

Karin let out an offensive scoff and leveled a disgusted look at him. "This is still happening?"

Itachi raised an eyebrow. "What exactly do you mean by that?"

"Um." She scrunched her nose before trudging over to the table, murmuring under her breath. "Never mind."

She seated herself almost directly beside where he'd been working, her eyes boring into the opposite wall as Itachi moved his dough aside, pointedly fixed away from him.

Well. That was certainly her own prerogative.

Itachi gathered fresh eggs and herbs in silence. Karin said nothing for the remainder of his preparations, though he was aware of her occasional apprehensive glances at his back as he began to fry eggs for the both of them.

He served her first, placing one plate in front of her and the other directly across from her, where he took his seat.

"Did you have plans for the day?" he asked. He took up his cutlery and Karin slowly followed suit, parroting his actions like a child learning by imitation.

"Uh." Karin lifted an egg on her plate with the edge of her fork, as if expecting to find something nefarious hidden under it. "Not really."

"We ought to make some, then."

Karin gave him a dubious look. "We."

"I don't know who else might."

"Yeah." Karin shifted in her chair uncomfortably. "Um—sure. Yeah, let's do that." She looked down mournfully at her eggs. "Um. Whatever you wanna do."

"Excellent." With that, he turned back to his meal, until several moments had passed where Karin's staring continued, unabated. "Yes, Karin?"

"What are you up to here?" she asked, punctuating her question with a pointed jab of her fork. "You're starting to freak me out."

"Well." He considered it for a moment. "First, I would like to finish breakfast. Then I suppose I'll clean up the kitchen and have things ready for dinner."

If Karin thought it strange that he would choose to clean up after himself when the house would easily take care of that on its own, she didn't voice it. "Yeah? And then what?"

Itachi hummed around a bite of eggs, then cleared his throat. "I suppose I'll catch up a bit on my reading. I've prepared a few things for dinner, so I suppose once it gets later in the day, I'll also get started on that."

Karin searched his face for a long moment before she sighed and rubbed her eyes under the lenses of her glasses, then pulled her plate close towards her. "Fine. If that's how you're gonna be about it." With that, she adjusted the fork in her hands and attacked her breakfast with a viciousness that - while not all that unusual for Karin - still seemed unusually spirited.

.

.

.

The rest of the day passed amicably in the library. Karin waited for him to seat himself at one of his preferred couches before she took up residence nearby with one of her abominable romance novels. After long enough, however, she surreptitiously moved to a spot on the couch across from him, where she watched him over the top of her novel as if expecting to be reprimanded.

In a sense, she almost reminded him of a deer, unknowingly approaching a baited trap, though charitably, he would compare her to a squirrel—quick, attentive, and boiling with unchanneled energy.

Going forward, Itachi decided, he would opt for the more charitable view.

The longer he went without acknowledging Karin, the more comfortable she seemed to become, until the late afternoon found her sprawled out on her stomach with her book laid out in front of her, her legs kicking behind her casually.

Later, he prepared dinner for them both, and they again turned to the library for an evening of tea, cakes, and more reading, until night fell, and eventually, Karin retired to her own room.

"So, uh, good night, I guess," she said, reporting to him with her half-finished book tucked in her arms like a shy school-child.

The lights in the library had long begun to dim, though Karin ensured that the low light would not be an impediment to their reading by carrying over ample candles for the evening earlier, after their dinner.

She held up her book and waggled its spine. "I'm gonna—I'll finish the rest of this tonight, uh, in bed. But I wanted to make sure that I, you know. That I said thanks, for all that."

"Think nothing of it." With that, Itachi closed the book in his lap and set it aside, before nodding politely to her. "Have a pleasant night."

The next morning was much like the previous, though their interactions had softened somewhat, becoming streamlined with gentle repetition. Karin had found things other than suspicion to occupy her, including a red-bound novel she splayed out on the kitchen table, that she read with rapt, sincere attention. He prepared breakfast for them both while she read at the table, and then they returned to the library.

And then again.

Some days she would assist him, sighing with a heavy air of oppression as he walked her through some of the simple recipes he'd learned from his mother. Other times, she was content to sit and watch, or sit and read to herself. Regardless of what she did, however, she seldom strayed far from his side, a pet testing the bounds of its leash.

In their downtime, Karin would lounge on the couch with her romance novels, which she consumed at an alarming rate now that she had little else to preoccupy her. Over the course of several days, she migrated from the opposing couch to his own, starting from the very opposite end but sneaking closer until there was only a polite distance between them.

She stopped there, though, and made no further attempts to encroach into his territory.

Though he would occasionally catch Karin in small moments of observation, he only seemed to preoccupy a small portion of her attention. In fact, at times she almost seemed to forget his presence entirely in favor of her reading, which she had leapt into with gusto. She'd turn the page with a too-wide grin on her face, then snicker and twirl her hair as she read on, slouching further into the cushions as she became absorbed in her reading.

Once, he had the poor sense to sneak a glance over her shoulder, only to find an accounting of supposed romance so gruesome that he immediately turned back to the history he'd been thumbing through.

Wretched.

He felt himself becoming strangely untethered the more he fell into their routine, as if nothing could bother him. The outside world - the village, the university, the Rangers - all of it seemed to have vanished for him, fading away into his subconscious.

Of course, Sasuke and Shisui were never far from his mind, though he found himself spending less time actively worrying over them. He continued to leave them to their privacy and sought to pry no further into their affairs, which seemed to him the best way he might keep them protected from the slitted eyes of the spellcaster.

Several times he did find himself wondering, though, whether Sasuke had advanced at all in his career, or whether Shisui had finally returned to the village.

Whether either of them had returned to their searches for him, as unfruitful as they'd been before.

If Karin happened to catch him in those moments, staring contemplatively into space as he imagined what Sasuke might be doing, what he might be thinking, he was careful to school his features into something unbothered and leave her none the wiser.

It being Karin, though, he could not say whether his attempt at concealment was as effective as he would have preferred.

A week or so of this had gone by before Karin felt the need to air her mounting frustration. He'd just sat down across from her to eat breakfast when he noticed that Karin had yet to actually eat any of her food, though she'd certainly started playing with it.

Karin was not one to take to a meal with anything but incredible enthusiasm, especially in the last few days that he had been preparing their meals, so naturally this seemed odd to him.

Itachi cleared his throat lightly, in order to catch her attention. "Whatever it is, it will be easier if you simply tell me, rather than that hint around it."

Karin flushed, then grumbled under her breath. "I…" She squirmed, swirling her fork in the tiny puddle of egg yolk she'd made inside of her potatoes. "I really think you should check on your brother."

Itachi chewed slowly, turning her suggestion over in his mind. "Do you know something I don't, Karin?"

"No." The uneasiness in her voice made it difficult for him to say whether he ought to believe her. "It, uh, would just make me feel better if you did…"

Ah. Guilt. "They're all fine," he assured her, as he again lifted his fork and began to push his breakfast into neat corners around his plate. "I do not need to look in on them to know that."

Karin's face screwed up into an unpleasant grimace. She bent her head and watched her breakfast grow cold. "Please?" she murmured, after a moment. "Would you please?"

Itachi glanced at Karin as he took a bite of his own breakfast. She was avoiding his eyes, her own downcast as if he'd just scolded her. "Is there a particular reason you're suddenly so interested in my family's affairs, Karin?"

"It just—" Karin dropped her fork on her plate and, with an angry jerk, stood up from the table and carried her dish into the basin, her breakfast almost wholly untouched. "Whatever! Do whatever you want to do. I don't care."

Karin stomped out of the kitchen, her footsteps loud as she left down the hallway, an incredible feat given the soft material her little slippers were made of.

Rather than chase after her, Itachi sighed and returned to his meal, not wanting his efforts to go to waste. He was still not one to give into tantrums, regardless of how well he and she had managed to mend their relationship over the last few days.

Whatever grace he may have extended to Karin, it fell short of leaving him in a position where he would be so anxious to mollify her.

He finished his breakfast in silence and, just as he had in the days prior, cleaned the kitchen and left a bowl of peeled potatoes soaking for their dinner. Before he left, he carefully stocked a serving platter with small snacks, fruit and crackers and nuts that Karin would have trouble resisting.

When he walked into the library, Karin was squirreled away in a far corner, curled up in a little ball with her book propped up on her knees. She peeked at him over the cover of her book, eyes narrowed as she watched him enter the library with his tray.

"I brought a few snacks should you get hungry later," he said aloud, and was gratified when Karin let out a low growl, despite her stubborn grip around her book. "I'll just leave this here, then," he said, as he placed the platter into neutral territory, a table that was close to her chosen reading nook that did not intrude into her personal space.

His trap thus baited, Itachi returned to where he'd left his reading from the day before, displeased to note that Karin's eyes followed him as he walked, his snack offering immediately forgotten.

Karin held her ground until it was just short of dinner time. He could hear her stomach growling even from across the library, though each time he lifted his eyes to check on her, he was answered by another vicious glare and steady, determined silence.

It seemed that she was hellbent on waiting, stubbornly, until he did as she had bid.

"It seems to me that you ought to have gotten hungry by now, Karin," he noted loudly, without looking up from his reading. "Surely there are better uses of your time than staging a hunger strike."

There was no response to that, and when he peered over to gauge how Karin had received his teasing remark, he was met with sharp, steely silence, her fiery eyes lit with such an icy anger that for a moment, he was taken aback by it.

"Do you think I would not look on my own if I were truly curious?" he asked, to no answer. "I can only imagine why you feel so invested in my personal affairs all of a sudden."

With a short huff, Karin lifted her book over her face, blocking his view of her.

"I see. So you believe that I will starve first, for want of company." Humming to himself, Itachi returned to his own reading, though his eyes quickly became lost between the lines of text. He turned a page, if only to give the appearance of indifference.

"There is a riddle about this, you know," he said, no longer having any expectation that Karin would respond. It was relieving, in a way: it meant he was in no hurry to reach a point, as he often had to do with her. "Or rather, a paradox of sorts, of the collision between two bodies: an object which cannot be moved, and a force which cannot be stopped."

He paused for several seconds, then turned another page. "It is a paradox because neither object can confront the other without losing something of its nature: an immovable object cannot be moved. An unstoppable force cannot be stopped. One must yield for the other, but neither is able to do so without compromise."

In an attempt to be sly, he glanced again at Karin out of his periphery, only to be met with the cover of the novel she'd chosen to hide behind. Seeing no need to continue his farce, Itachi closed his book and placed it by his side, then folded his hands in his lap.

"The truth is that the situation is an impossible one. An immovable object requires infinite energy to resist all motion. An unstoppable force persists with that same infinite energy. In effect, the unstoppable force and immovable object can only be representations of the same infinity, as two infinities is an impossibility."

This time, when he looked towards Karin, she met his gaze evenly, her eyebrows pinched closely together in thought.

"Yes, Karin?" he asked. "Do you have something you'd perhaps like to add to that?"

With a feral, toothy scowl, Karin jerked her head away, and rested it on her bony, tucked in knees. "That's idiotic," she murmured, her voice projected away from him. "They'd just blow each other up or something."

"That's one possible theory," he said. Inexplicably, he felt a strange tugging, both at the corner of his mouth, where he was trying to suppress a persistent smile, and in his chest, where something less familiar was pulling at him. "Perhaps one impossibility simply cancels out another. The object and force both cease to exist when confronted with one another. What do you think of that?"

Aside from a muted, unenthusiastic grunt, Karin didn't respond.

Finally, sensing that he'd exhausted Karin's humor, Itachi sighed and stood, walking over to where he'd left the mirror several days ago, abandoned on its side. Despite lacking Karin's uncanny ability to know his business at all times, he could sense her stiffen, and her eyes jumped to him as he flipped the mirror over where he'd left it the other day.

"One impossibility cancels out another?" he repeated, only half-rhetorically.

The images blurred and rippled under his fingers, as they always had, though the cold, icy bite of the glass under his fingers was much sharper than he remembered.

This time, he did not see any members of his family, nor did he see Shisui. Instead, familiar dark, stone halls arose, lit only by faint, flickering candlelight. The University.

His things were no longer in the room he'd occupied, nor had he expected them to be. He tried to recall whether there was anything of significant value, sentimental or otherwise, that he'd left behind there, but as best as he could recall, aside from his writings, which would certainly have been preserved, very little of what he'd brought with him or acquired since was of any notable value, and certainly would not have appeared to be to whoever would have cleared out his room after he'd left.

He flipped through several other scenes: the classrooms where he'd been teaching when he'd left, the library where he'd spent most of his nights, hunchbacked and stiff-necked as he copied his notes from aging texts. The image blurred again, and the mirror returned to its cloudy, neutral state.

Not quite honest, but enough that Karin should be satisfied.

"Nothing that concerns me," he said aloud. When he looked up, Karin was watching him closely, her book closed and clutched tightly under her chin, no longer a suitable shield for her gawking.

"Yes, Karin?"

"You—" Here, she grimaced, as if she'd tasted something bitter. "You looked," she said, dismal. "In the mirror."

"I did."

She tipped her book back, the top of it pushing against her lips as if she meant to silence herself. "You looked."

"Was that not what you wanted?"

"I'm still mad at you," she murmured, her eyes narrowing. From as far as she was, he almost couldn't hear her.

"Well. That is your own prerogative if you are," he said mildly.

Karin frowned, equally unhappy with his acquiescence as she'd been with his resistance.

"I imagined that you'd be pleased by that, given how insistent you were that I look," he added. "But it's not matter."

Her shoulders fell. "Well. That's what I thought too."

"And you aren't?"

"You just—no. Of course not." she snapped, petulant. "You—you just did it because I beat you up about it. That's not what I wanted." Her voice faltered. "I mean—it was, but also just not—not like that." She looked up at him pitifully, her eyes dark and set with exhaustion. "I… not like this. I wanted to—to help."

"I see." They were once again at a crossroads. "There is nothing further than you need to do, Karin," he offered. He hoped that this would ease whatever worries she had, though he had very little confidence that it would. "By any means," he continued, as if in consolation, "if you'd like to be of assistance to me, you can start by offering me company, instead of ignoring me."

"By—" Karin's eyes blew wide behind her glasses, round and red as a harvest moon. "I—uh. Okay," she said, her voice small. "Sure. Alright."

Their stalemate thus broken, Karin wobbled to her feet, lifted his platter of food in her arms, and shuffled over to claim the seat beside him. She collapsed down onto the cushion as if her knees had buckled beneath her, her body doing nothing to resist the fall.

The bowls and plates on the tray rattled from the sheer force of it, and Karin spent a long moment staring blankly at the library ceiling.

"I've never seen a more stupid waste of time," she eventually said, slightly bashful, as she finally selected a biscuit from the tray and began to nibble at it. "I just spent the last four hours rereading the same page."

Itachi sighed. "There was nothing preventing you from reading your novel, Karin."

She stuck her tongue out at him, crumbs and all. "Says you. If you were just gonna look anyway, you could've done it without making me wait so long for it."

They spent several minutes in companionable silence, Karin moving between different treats as he flipped his book back open to roughly the last page he'd actually read that hadn't merely been for show. Said page contained a number of inscrutable, handwritten graphs that made his eyes smart to look at them for too long.

After about a minute of fruitless scanning, Itachi conceded that it would likely be a futile affair, one best reserved for a time where his focus was a little stronger. Instead, he found his mind drifting elsewhere, to a problem his mind had begun to fixate on, the way one might examine a box with no apparent opening.

So much of what passed between him and Karin was unnecessarily antagonistic, always wrapped up in some sort of power struggle. This was in spite of Karin's clear desire to make things peaceable between them, and his own diminished interest in antagonizing her further.

"Something has occurred to me, actually. There is a matter where I believe I will require your assistance."

Karin blinked over at him, honeycomb poised over another biscuit. "Huh? With what?"

He shrugged. "Give me a day. I'll need to think about it more."

With the apparent belief that he'd lied for the sake of pacifying her, Karin growled and turned away, viciously tearing apart her biscuit as she returned to her novel, spraying crumbs and drops of honey over the pages.

.

.

.

It took less than a day for an idea to take full form.

Karin was plating their kitchen table for dinner, one of the few household tasks he assigned her. Despite the ornate dining room where Karin had initially staged their meals, he'd grown to prefer the simple kitchen she had, and the simple, low table where they'd been taking almost all of their meals now.

"There is something I would like to do tomorrow, or the day after," he told Karin as she sorted through cutlery, checking her place settings, "something that will require your assistance."

"Yeah?" She looked over her shoulder at him with one raised eyebrow, as if not fully taking him seriously. "What is it?"

"Well." He paused a moment to rub at his wrist, sore from just having mashed their potatoes. "By my rough estimate it's nearly June, is it not?"

"Uh…" Karin shrugged as if to say—sure, might as well be.

Itachi hummed. "In my village, there was a festival every year around this time, one that the entire village took part in celebrating." It was one that he'd enjoyed more so than others but, in his indignant youth, he'd seldom been involved in their preparations aside from his quick attendance for Sasuke's sake. "It was based upon our village's own history, so it was considered an event for all of us to join in."

Karin frowned. "Okay…"

"So, given that I am not able to attend in person this year, I'd like to put on my own celebration here."

"Your own—" Karin gave him a suspicious look. "And what's that entail?"

Itachi smiled, taking a strange, perverse sort of pleasure in the look of abject terror that crossed her face. "For you, Karin, it entails a lot of helping."

Her eyes narrowed, but, unable to find any sign of falsehood, she slowly nodded her head. "Okay." With one last scowl at the dinner table, she nodded once, resolute. "Fine."

.

.

.

The morning of their planned festival, Itachi woke early and began his preparations in the kitchen, kneading dough for the several pastries he intended to make.

Though she tended to be a much later riser than he was, it was not long before he heard Karin's shoes pittering against the floor in her haste before the door to the kitchen was thrown open.

When he turned, Karin stood there in the doorway, poised as if she were preparing to challenge him.

"Good morning, Karin," he said mildly.

"Tell me what to do," she said, foregoing any greeting. She rolled up her sleeves, set her hands on her hips, and schooled her face into one of the most serious expressions he'd ever seen on her. "I'm ready to work."

"Hm. Well." He'd gotten a little bolder in assigning kitchen work to Karin, though he very much still felt like the commander of the kitchen, assessing their progress and delegating tasks properly. "There are nuts over there you can shell and chop."

She nodded seriously, in a way that almost seemed comical, coming from her. "On it."

As Karin began to shell the nuts and grind them into a smooth, sediment-like texture, he began to roll out his dough and started explaining how they would finish the filling.

"You will need to mix it all together, and then I will spoon it in to finish. Start with cinnamon—a decent pinch. A cup of molasses. A decent amount of butter, melted. Sugar. A small pinch of salt." When he looked back, Karin was glaring back at him, her red eyebrows pressed closely together. "Yes, Karin?"

Her face scrunched into a scowl. "Those aren't real measurements."

"Of course they are." When she didn't respond to that, he added, "Estimate to the best of your ability. You're clever enough to figure it out."

The tops of Karin's ears burned bright red, but that seemed to do the trick—when she tired of grinding down nuts, she started to rustle through their cabinets with minimal grumbling and, by the time he had finished rolling out and forming his dough, she seemed content with what she'd put together.

He glanced over the counter and hummed noncommittally, earning yet another glare from her, before he tilted the bowl towards himself and, finding her mixture suitable, carried it over to where he'd been working. "I'll show you how to finish this, then, for next time."

"Next time," Karin repeated. "Next time?"

Itachi held up one flour-dusted hand. "Watch closely."

With the mixture Karin made sitting on the side of the counter, he divided the dough into small sections, forming each into small, round bowl-shapes. With Karin indeed watching closely over his shoulder, her forehead pinched with concentration, he filled each with the nut mixture and carefully folded the tops of the dough over each, giving them the appearance of a large, squat egg, which he then sliced in half to yield two rounded moon-shaped pastries.

He set each on a tray and left them to bake in the oven until the crust had grown a flaky brown, and the sweet, comforting scent of molasses had filled the kitchen. It'd been an indulgence, when he was child—his mother would let him run his finger along the molasses bowl once before she'd clean and refill it, allowing him the opportunity to have as much as he could catch in a single bite.

He hadn't eaten molasses by itself since then, despite having the means to do so now. That was the fun of it, though, and one of the many constraints of adulthood—it had been a treasure before, when he was only allowed it on special occasions. There was joy in that scarcity, in having that treat reserved to only a few, select moments.

"That should do it," Itachi said, as he pulled the tray out and set it on the counter to cool. "These may not be the same level of quality as my mother's were, but hopefully they will suffice."

Karin watched him move the desserts to a rack to cool, her arms crossed sternly across her chest. "So what do we do now?"

Itachi shrugged. "Now we're done."

"What does that mean?" She poked one of the pastries with her finger, examining it. "What do we do with all of this stuff?"

"We pack these," he said. "And then we start our celebration."

A small wrinkle appeared on her forehead. "Okay," she said carefully. "So we'll do that…"

"And then we'll celebrate," he repeated, taking only a small sense of satisfaction in Karin's annoyed grunt. "First, I'd like a basket."

In the village, the festival would have started that morning, with the first few storytellers gathered on street corners in the early, misty dawn, before people would have started to congregate. By this time, booths with treats and small trinkets for sale would have already been opened and active, and all other business would have concluded for the day, the carpenters and cobblers and blacksmiths all closing shop early in the morning, if they opened their doors at all.

The children would be running around the village hanging their handmade lanterns, so that the storytellers could continue later into the night without needing to move indoors.

It was not complete, as far as a proper celebration would be concerned, but what they had would suffice for the two of them.

"Now then," Itachi said as he settled a cloth over their packed goods. "Would you be so kind as to show me to the outside?"

Karin blinked once at this request but dutifully turned from the kitchen and began to lead him down the hallways. She didn't protest, though it didn't stop her from taking an occasional curious glance back at him, as if uncertain of how he'd react to leaving her house for the first time since he'd first arrived in it.

Which was fair, he thought: the first time they'd met on her front lawn, he'd attempted to kill her, and she'd nearly shattered his arm.

But he had no interest in revisiting that unfortunate meeting today: there was a festival to be had, and no one but him who could direct it.

When they finally arrived at the two, large doors to Karin's mansion, she waved her hand and they parted effortlessly, the heavy wood whispering across her floors, revealing the sky for the first time in the several months Itachi had been captive in her home.

Without a word, Itachi unrolled the blanket he'd packed and draped it over the front steps, giving them a clean place to sit and eat. Truly, he had lost track of how long he'd been there, but revisiting it now, it seemed it ought to be mid-summer, given the few students he'd seen in his brief glimpse of the University.

It was pleasant still, though, as much as any summer had been: for all the lack of real sunlight, the air was temperate and fresh, unexpectedly welcome after the months he'd spent inside Karin's house. He supposed the weather was the same year-round where Karin lived, making it difficult to appreciate the first days of summer when one hadn't had to survive the cold, dark days of winter.

Itachi placed his basket in the middle of the blanket, and took his seat on one side, while motioning for Karin to sit beside him, on the other side of the basket, which she did.

"You seemed troubled, Karin," he noted, after several long minutes had passed in silence.

"I…" Karin let out a sigh with so much force behind it that it might as well have been a scream. When she raised her head again, her face was flushed, and her hair was in disarray over her face. "I feel like… I feel like there's something I should be doing," she said, cryptically. "Something… something more important than this."

"If you'd like, you can help by helping yourself," he said, as he flipped open their basket, where he'd packed their pastries, some other treats, and a single bottle of cherry wine.

Perhaps a bold choice but, given that it was to be split between the two of them, did not seem to be too concerning.

"That's not—whatever." Still, Karin did not move. "If you say so," she muttered, as she finally reached out for a pastry, which she nibbled slowly, contemplatively, before flicking her fingers towards the lawn to clean them.

She dusted the front of her clothes off, scattering crumbs onto the stone below them. After fumbling with the cork top of the wine he'd brought, she poured herself a generous glass of cherry wine and took a first, hearty sip.

Out of a sense of camaraderie, he accepted a glass for himself somewhat sooner than he might have, though he took only a small sip of it, and resolved to be moderate about it.

Karin gestured towards him with her glass. "So what do we do now? Just drink until the day runs out?"

"Traditionally, there would be town elders who would share stories from our town's history."

"I see." She frowned. "I don't—uh, I don't really have anything like that I could share."

"I can manage." After all, he'd grown up with the stories, had spent years crouched in the grass as he listened to their familiar contours. After taking a long sip of the cherry wine, he cleared his throat and began to recite the same story he'd heard hundreds of times in his youth, one that was considered central to their summer holiday. "Once upon a time, there was a fairy."

Immediately, Karin's eyebrows shot up. "A fairy?"

"Yes, Karin, a fairy." He waved her next question off before she could even ask it; allowing her to derail him so early into the story would mean he'd never finish it. "In those days, there was a legend about fairies, and how any man could force a fairy to be wed to him by fairy custom, if he were to trap a fairy and hold her for ten days. At the end of the ten days, if the man were to embrace the fairy as his wife, the fairy would become his beloved for the rest of their days."

Karin shifted uneasily at that, perhaps finding a thinly veiled critique of herself in the story.

"At the same time, there was a young man from my village who knew of this custom and endeavored to have a fairy wife, in part to prove to the other villagers how clever he was. He was an intelligent, industrious man who had won the approval of many of his fellow villagers, and in truth had no interest in a romantic partner. He saw it as a challenge, and sought to prove himself before his colleagues and neighbors by accomplishing a task only thought possible in old tales."

"Hm." Karin scrunched her nose. "So he was looking to show off."

"Not without having put a good deal of thought into the potential risks involved." After taking another sip of wine, Itachi continued. "One day, the man was able to catch such a fairy on the outskirts of his village, in a web he weaved himself using his own weaving abilities, and silk from the unripened cornstalks he'd taken from his own garden.

"While weaving is not generally a skill learned by men, the man had learned it himself, finding no skill beyond his own abilities. This gave it much greater power, because it had come from his own hand. Using this thread, the young man was able to trap the fairy, who he then brought back to his village, bound up in the web. The fairy, who understood the legend as well as the young man did, made him a promise: if he would agree to grant her freedom before the end of those ten days, she would tell him the secret to her magic and would teach him all that she knew."

"A bargain," Karin said, with a hint of triumphant recognition in her voice.

"Just so." Itachi continued, "The young man agreed, and said if the fairy would reveal her secret to him within those ten days, he would grant her freedom. Their bargain thus struck, the fairy then began to tell the man the story of a powerful sorceress who once lived in their lands, who had tamed a wild beast to make it do her bidding. The story was a long one, and involved many detours and introductions of other characters. By the end of the night, when the young man had grown tired, the fairy was only part of the way through her story."

Karin hummed thoughtfully, sipping from her wine lightly as he continued. Ordinarily this would be the point where another storyteller would take up the narrative, starting the story of the powerful sorceress and the boar, or whatever story the initial storyteller had chosen for the first night.

While such stories were often meant to show off the storyteller's own inventions, as well as testing the patience of the audience, including the many children who often attended, he had no such interest - nor did he see much benefit - in prolonging the narrative for them.

"Each night, the fairy would continue the story, adding on new characters and turns, only to leave it half-finished at the end of each night, so that the man would have to wait until the next day for her to resume."

"And that worked?" Karin snorted. "Not very clever if he didn't catch onto that after the first night."

"Well. It did work, though not because the man was able to be fooled so easily. Over the ten days, the fairy became charmed by the man, and he, by her. She admired his inquisitive nature and his courtesy, despite their circumstances. Though she had done her best to place a glamor on the man, to ensure that she could continue telling her story unabated, he gradually became enamored of her by his own true heart. As the days passed, she required less and less effort to do so, until the fairy realized the man had allowed her to continue entirely of his own volition.

"On the last night, the fairy had intended that the man would fall prey to her story, and that the ten days would pass without him properly consummating their relationship. And in fact, for most of that final night, the man seemed unaware of how little time he had left, and he continued to listen to her story as if it did not matter."

"And then she'd get the hell out of there, right?" she replied, wryly.

"Not quite. As it so happened, the man's snare had not been as powerful as he'd intended, and the fairy's magic much greater than he'd supposed. When he went to loosen the tie at midnight, he realized that it had already been cut, and that the fairy had been free to leave as she pleased, but had chosen not to."

Itachi swirled the little bit of wine left in his glass before taking another sip, relishing its sweetness. "When he realized that she'd broken free from his trap, he was neither angry nor fearful. Rather, he was pleased to realize he'd been outwitted. It was, to him, a sign that he'd fallen for someone whose wiles could match his own cleverness."

"Yeah? Is that the sort of thing men are into?"

"For him, it was exactly what he had wanted in a mate, and he'd been lucky to find it in his captive."

"You don't say." Karin placed her empty glass on the blanket beneath her as she reached for the bottle and began to pour herself another generous glass. "So how did things end up from there?"

"It ended as you would imagine." When Karin raised an eyebrow, he smiled. "When I was a child, I was told they shared a very chaste kiss and became husband and wife."

"But it was probably a little less chaste than that, huh?" When he didn't budge, she sighed. "Well, then what happened?"

"Hm?"

"What happened next? Did she stay?"

"Ah. Well." There were more than enough narratives about the supposed descendents of the man and the fairy, though they had never been given a proper ending in any of the stories he'd heard. In a community such as theirs, though, a long line of descendents was the best end that anyone might ever hope for. "I suppose they lived happily ever after."

.

.

.

Karin handily finished off the rest of their cherry wine and spent the rest of the night spinning the empty bottle on the porch steps. Itachi had the sense that she would've opted to open a second bottle if he'd thought to bring one with them, though even without more wine, she seemed content enough with the mild state of inebriation she'd managed.

She bobbed her head happily as she hummed to herself, her cheeks colored a healthy pink, her hair a bright, loose haze around her shoulders.

"Perhaps it's time we went in," he offered, staring up at the grey sky. He could feel a vague sense of drowsiness closing in on him, partly from how early he'd woken up that morning to begin his preparations. The wine had left him warm and soft-limbed, his thoughts a pleasant buzz that, with very little effort, would blend seamlessly into a gentle night's rest.

In the village, their festival often went long past sunset, to be concluded with a large bonfire, with families and lovers huddled together for warmth as the warm summer day faded into a cool, dewy night.

Karin tapped her nails against the neck of the wine bottle but made no attempt to move. "Yeah."

Not wanting to be the first to end things, Itachi shifted once but otherwise made no move to stand.

"Is there, uh, another story like that you could maybe tell me? Just one more?" Karin asked.

"Hm?"

"Like that man, with the fairy." She looked up at him suddenly, as if pleading for him to humor her. "Stories like that, from where you're from."

"Well—" There were, certainly, though none immediately came to mind. In his mild inebriation, Itachi was not particularly inclined to search out another. "What did you have in mind?"

"Just, something. Whatever. You would know better than I would." She fidgeted, before pulling her knees up to her chest and resting her chin there. "You know, just—it's supposed to be more than one story, isn't it?"

"It is," he conceded, though the other stories had a habit of being more extemporaneous creatures of invention, that seemed a monumental task in the moment. "How about you?" he asked instead. "If you have a story you'd like to tell."

For a moment, Karin was quiet. "No," she said quietly. "I don't have anything like that."

"No? What of… ah…" It occurred to him that while Karin did quite a bit of reading, those were not the sorts of stories he'd rather hear repeated. "There is, ah, the story of your own circumstances," he offered, clumsily. "The story of how you came to be here, and such. You've only shared parts of it before. I'm sure there's much more to it."

Much more that he'd not contemplated much in the past, though his curiosity had been struck a number of times.

"I think I'd like to know," he offered, affably. "More about you—I'd like to know."

Karin stiffened. Abruptly, she stuffed her empty glass and the wine bottle into their basket with a loud, dangerous clink and stood. "Don't be stupid," she said, turning her back to him and facing the house. "Like you'd care about something stupid like that."

"Hm?" It took him a moment to realize that Karin was sincere, and sincerely upset. "Are you alright, Karin?" Itachi stood uneasily, uncertain of his next move. "Is it so strange that I would want to know? That I would ask?"

Karin balled one fist at her side, her fingers clenched so tightly that they were white, the blood squeezed out of them. After a moment, her shoulders began to tremble.

"Karin?"

"I don't know why you would say something idiotic like that," she gritted out. Her voice was tight, constrained with the effort of having to withhold something much more substantial.

"Karin…" He reached out to her, setting one unsteady hand on her shoulder. It rested there, limp, ineffectual, lazy.

It could not be more like him: always uncertain, in matters such as these. Always a spectator, a guest, in matters of the heart, never fully able to commit to true sincerity, never able to offer the same open, unrestrained affection that had been given to him and forsaken so many times. Always fumbling, hiding, avoiding the nakedness of love out of his own fears, his own insecurities.

Always running, until even he had been left with no further place to run.

Itachi tightened his grip and pulled Karin in towards himself, tucking her head beneath his chin with several inches to spare, an imperfect fit, just as a pestle slots imperfectly into a mortar.

It was far from perfect, in fact, and perhaps it never would be: perhaps humanity was a skill he would never fully master, and perhaps his attempts would never be a substantial repayment of what had been given to him.

Right then, though, it was an offering, of all he had to offer.

"Because I meant what I said, Karin."

Her shoulders began to tremble in earnest then, and her breathing became ragged with the telltale sign of tears. "Are you an idiot?" she asked, the harshness she'd tried to force into her tone undercut by the watery sound of her incoming tears.

In the days that had passed since the incident in Karin's lab - since her last passionate outburst - he'd grown no wiser, no kinder, and no better at consoling others. He was no more forgiving, no less broken than he'd been since he was a child, and yet—

And yet, he ached. Something cold and hard in his chest ached at the sight of proud, stubborn Karin hiding her tears like a dog hidden away to die. "It's okay, Karin. It'll be okay."

Her fingers dug into his shirt, so tight that he thought the fabric might tear.

He lowered one gentle hand to the small of her back, holding her as close as he could justify to himself. He wasn't sure if it was the wine or their proximity, but he felt warm, so much so that it almost made him want to shiver.

His arm twitched.

"I'm sorry," Karin choked out, as if sensing his discomfort. She seemed furious at her own tears, that they would dare fall without her permission. "I'm sorry. I don't know what else to do. I'm sorry."

Itachi sighed and ran his hand up her back again, smoothing down her loose hair. "It's okay, Karin. You don't need to be."

"It isn't fine!" Karin banged one fist against his chest futilely, but loaded with her pent up frustration. "It's not fine, but you keep acting like it's fine! You—you're just okay with it, but you're not supposed to be. Why aren't you angry!" she demanded, as she shoved him away. "Huh? What's going on here?"

"Why aren't I…" He frowned. "I have no reason to be angry with you, Karin."

"That's a lie. That's a damn, dirty lie and you know it is! I ruined your life! I stole you from your family! Why can't you just be angry over it, huh?"

"Because it's okay, Karin." It may not be entirely true, if he were forced to think about it long enough, but then, in that moment, he could allow himself to believe it. "I am not angry with you."

"I hate you," she snapped. She laughed, her voice choked by a sob. "Is that a good enough reason? Could you be angry with me then?"

"That's okay." This only caused her to cry harder, and so he drew her back in with a sigh, as her sobs subsided into childish sniffles. "You're allowed to."

"Don't be stupid," she said. In the same breath, though, she added, "I'm sorry." She nudged him back and removed her glasses, holding them aside as she dried her eyes. "I—I don't know where that all came from."

He could make several guesses.

"It's late," he said instead, looking politely off to the side as she composed her. He had no cloak or coat to offer her, though he sorely wished for one then. "Let's go inside," he said, opening the door and guiding her down the hall, his hand resting in the small of her back.

She kept her face pointedly trained on the opposite wall, her arms crossed tightly in front of her, refusing to meet his eyes. He had the vague sense that she was embarrassed, which was a surprisingly refreshing state to find her.

She hadn't moved around the halls from her initial trek that morning, and so he was able to find her room with relatively little issue.

"Well." He wasn't sure what more to offer than that—he was still as painfully stilted with these sorts of encounters as he'd ever been, despite the fleeting burst of insanity that had gotten him to that point. "Perhaps some sleep may help."

"I…" Her face was set with a healthy flush, likely from a mix of mild intoxication and honest embarrassment. "Don't take this the wrong way," she started, "'cause I definitely don't mean it the way you're gonna think I mean it."

Itachi shifted his weight. "Okay."

"Would you wanna just—" Her grip on her forearm tightened, as she wiggled her shoulders. "... stay a while?"

"In your room?"

Karin's cheeks immediately blossomed bright red. "Well, you don't have to say it like that!" She gnashed her teeth and glared down the opposite end of the hallway, pointedly avoiding his eyes. "I was just saying that we could've had a good conversation! So if you wanted to keep it going, I was just telling you that it would be fine if you wanted to talk more!"

"Ah. I see."

That time, Karin turned her blunt glare on him, her tiny hands balled into fists at her sides.

"That would be fine," he amended.

Karin let out a hot sigh. "It's just, over the last few days, it's just been different, not in a bad way, but—"

"I'll stay, Karin," he said, cutting her off. "And we can talk more."

For a short second, Karin looked oddly stricken.

"Well?" Itachi gestured to the door, and Karin angrily stomped in. Perhaps one day he would get a handle on her rapidly shifting moods, but he was not confident that it would be any day in the near future.

Her room was—well, he did not need to comment on it to Karin.

He took a seat by her vanity, which was strewn with powders and brushes, irregularly shaped bottles of perfume and pins and clips and jewels in all colors.

It was entirely unlike any room that he had lived in, personally. Not entirely how he had imagined Karin might keep her room as well, though it did have a certain lived-in quality that seemed appropriate for her.

That being said…

"Does not the house keep things in order for you?" he asked, only slightly indelicate. He rolled his boot over the carpet, knocking the toe of it against a discarded diamond earring.

"Uh." In a rare show of self-awareness, Karin seemed somewhat self-conscious. "I, uh, like it like this," she said lamely, waving her hand around her room. "Especially because otherwise, things will just take care of themselves."

"I see." And, in a way, he supposed that he did. Disorder could be a fantasy, to those who only lived ordered lives. The concept seemed funny to him, but he remembered his own destructive impulses in the library not long ago—his desire to destroy, if only to avoid the total elimination the house would otherwise wreak on him.

Yes, that made especial sense to him now, as he turned back to Karin, who was shuffling over to her bed.

She flopped onto the mattress face-first, groaning as she curled over top of the blankets, before wrapping herself up in her comforter and rolling over onto her back, so that her hair hung down off the edge.

"That's better," she said. She tipped her head back over the side of the bed and glanced over at him. "The room isn't spinning as much as it's just… a little blurry."

"It was only one bottle," Itachi said. "And we had several hours to finish it."

"Bah." Karin waved her hand regally, dismissing his explanation. "I already feel hungover."

"Mhm." Her emotional outburst was probably more to credit for that than the wine, though perhaps the two were more intertwined than he'd thought. "Some rest will do you good."

"Maybe." She smiled, oddly crooked. "So how about you tell me a bedtime story?"

.

.

.

"Hey." Something poked at his cheek. "Hey, hey—wake up."

Itachi groaned, low in his throat, as he turned over. His neck was sore, and there was a growing ache between his shoulder blades. And he was—

He was still in Karin's room. His face grew red, and he turned away, pointedly avoiding making eye contact with Karin, who had at some point changed into a short, light pink nightgown.

It was short enough that he could see her knees and part of her thigh peeking out from its high hem. The top of it—

The top of it, he was smart enough not to look.

"You need to go to bed," Karin said. Something soft touched his cheek. "You fell asleep before even getting to the good part," she added, sounding irritated.

Against his better judgment, Itachi turned to see a blanket, held out for him. When he hesitated, Karin dropped it down onto his shoulders unceremoniously. "There you go."

"What?"

"Go to bed," Karin repeated. When he leaned back against her vanity, she blustered. "Not—not here, you idiot. Just—somewhere. Wherever."

"Ah, well. Of course." Gently, Itachi pulled the blanket from his shoulders and folded it slowly, before tucking it under his arm. "I, uh, will go to the library, then."

Karin bonked his head with a pillow. "You have your choice of rooms, you idiot. With real beds." She crinkled her nose. "That couch can't be good for your back. Your posture is going to be all kinds of crooked by the time you're done, you know."

"Likely," he agreed.

"So…"

"Ah, right." He nodded once, perfunctorily. "Well, good night then, Karin. I'll see you in the morning."

As he stepped out of Karin's room and into the hall, he saw neither her fleeting smile nor the regretful look in her eyes as he shut the door behind him and walked away.